Wednesday, March 19, 2014

¡Oh, Canadá!

Ben Rowswell replaced Paul Gibbard as Canadian ambassador to Venezuela, as mandated by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. But a quick look into the appointee’s background brings special significance to his promotion, especially as opposition protests escalate in Venezuela.

Evil day!

In 2011, Rowswell gave a fascinating TEDx talk at Hayward University in California that outlined his views about the power of social media to shape democracy. He focused on post-Murbarak Egypt, before Mohammed Morsi’s election.

He detailed how notions of race, ethnicity and class may be pushed aside when organizing through social media platforms. He theorized that the internet allows for "opensource democracy," allowing individuals to exchange their ideas as equals.

But let’s look at that idea in the context of Venezuela, where the middle and upper classes are more likely to have regular access to the internet. Twitter and Facebook have been the choice tools of the opposition in recent months, both to organize protests and to call upon international support.

The Bolivarian Revolution itself was born 15 years ago upon massive social movements and since has experimented with many revolutionary forms of democratic participation. But theirs is a different concept of democracy than what Rowswell and other Western powers have in mind.

True, too true. Maduro and his Castroite allies have a Rousseauian perspective, not a liberal one. The idea of liberal democracy with protections for minorities can't be allowed to co-exist with Maduroismo. That would be the death of socialism.